Safety cap

ABSTRACT

A safety cap for bottles or other containers, said cap comprising a base, an integral skirt of plastic, said base having a connecting peripheral portion that inclines upwardly with respect to the skirt, and a bottle mouth seal, said skirt having means to lock the cap to the bottle mouth upon depression of the skirt and rotation of the cap, the connecting peripheral being flexible and resilient and comprising essentially a series of alternate depressions and ridges, of grooves and lands, and said depressions or grooves may provide thin diaphragm-like solid portions or alternatively apertures.

United States Patent 1 De Felice 1 May 22, 1973 SAFETY CAP [76] Inventor: Amedio P. De Felice, 251 Florence Street, Leominster, Mass. 01453 [22] Filed: Aug. 13, 1971 [21] Appl. No.: 171,469

[52] US. Cl. ..2l5/9 [51] Int. Cl. ..B65d 55/02 [58] Field of Search ..215/9, 41, 40, 44

[56] References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 3,435,975 4/1969 Weigand ..2l5/9 Primary Examiner-George T. Hall Attorney-Charles R. Fay

[57] ABSTRACT 5 Claims, 9 Drawing Figures Patented May 22, 1973 3,734,331

FIG. 5

FIG. 9

AMEDIO P. DEFELICE INVENTOR.

ATTORNEY SAFETY CAP BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In general it is the purpose of the present invention to provide a more efficient and less expensive safety cap for poison bottles and the like than those of the prior art, the present construction providing a variation on that shown in my application, for the same purposes.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The safety cap of this invention is a one-piece resilient plastic article. It has a skirt and a base, the base having an inner annular portion with a bottle mouth seal on its bottom surface, the base being surrounded by an outwardly extending, upwardly inclining flexible resilient peripheral edge portion connecting the base to the skirt. The peripheral portion is made resilient by reducing the amount of material therein as by providing alternate lands and grooves, the grooves being reduced down to a fine web or actually providing apertures extending through the said peripheral portion.

The skirt and the bottle neck have interengaging locking means thereon and they are arranged so that the bottom seal being engaged with the rim of the bottle, the skirt portion is manually depressible relative thereto on account of the increased flexibility of the peripheral portion connecting the skirt to the base. When thus depressed manually, the entire cap may be rotated as a whole to interlock the cap and the bottle neck. The interengaging locking means may be of any construction such as for instance bayonet slots, or interengaging lugs and recesses.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a top plan view illustrating one form of the invention;

FIG. 2 is a sectional view on line 2-2 as seen in FIG.

FIGS. 3 and 4 are sectional views illustrating differences in the land and groove conformations;

FIG. 5 is a partial plan view of a modification;

FIG. 6 is a section on line 6-6 of FIG. 5;

FIG. 7 is a partial plan view of a further modification;

FIG. 8 is a partial plan view of a still further modification; and

FIG. 9 is a sectional view on line 9-9 of FIG. 8.

PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION As shown in FIG. 1, the plastic safety cap of the present invention includes a closed or solid base portion 10 which is generally circular. It extends to a periphery l2 whence it slants upwardly on the surface of revolution of an inverted cone, see FIG. 2, to an outside edge 14 where it is joined to a depending skirt 16. This skirt is provided with lugs 18 which are adapted to fit and secure the cap to the bottle as shown in FIG. 2.

Approximately at the periphery 12 of the base 10 of the cap, there is a downwardly extending triangularly sectioned, continuous annular rib 20 which forms a seal with the mouth of the bottle as indicated at 22.

In the present case as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the upwardly slanting peripheral area 24 which connects base 10 and the top edge of skirt 16 at 14 is comprised of radial ridges and depressions or lands and grooves as at 26 and 28. The bottoms of the grooves are extremely thin and the ridges are high enough as illustrated in FIGS. 3 and 4 so as to provide a sturdy cap in which however the area at 24 the peripheral edge, connection portion, is flexible.

As shown in FIG. 3 the depressions or grooves may also have appreciable material at the bottoms thereof as is indicated at 30, or they may go down to practically nothing as at 32 in FIG. 4.

Also the areas at 32 could be actual slots, but if it is desired to maintain the cap completely closed with no holes through it, then there are no slots but the construction is as illustrated in FIG. 4.

Other forms of the invention are shown in FIGS. 5 and 6. Here the entire peripheral connection portion 34 is made of much less thickness than would normally be the case so that it is easily flexible but is still continuous. On the other hand a normal thickness of material could be maintained with annular depressions or grooves in it as shown at 36 in FIG. 7.

I claim:

1. A safety cap for a container having an open neck with a rim, said cap comprising a base and a surrounding skirt, a peripheral edge portion connecting the base to the skirt, said edge portion extending on a slant upwardly from the base to the skirt and including a series of weakened areas to provide that this connecting portion is more flexible than the remainder of the cap, and interengaging means on the interior of the skirt for locking the cap with respect to the mouth of the container, wherein the peripheral edge portion is continuous and includes a series of alternating grooves and lands.

2. The safety cap of claim 1 wherein said peripheral edge portion area is substantially throughout of thinner material than the base of the cap.

3. The safety cap of claim 1 wherein said peripheral edge portion area grooves and lands are radial.

4. The safety cap of claim 3 wherein the grooves have solid bottoms.

5. The safety cap of claim 1 wherein the peripheral edge portion lands and grooves are annular. 

1. A safety cap for a container having an open neck with a rim, said cap comprising a base and a surrounding skirt, a peripheral edge portion connecting the base to the skirt, said edge portion extending on a slant upwardly from the base to the skirt and including a series of weakened areas to provide that this connecting portion is more flexible than the remainder of the cap, and interengaging means on the interior of the skirt for locking the cap with respect to the mouth of the container, wherein the peripheral edge portion is continuous and includes a series of alternating grooves and lands.
 2. The safety cap of claim 1 wherein said peripheral edge portion area is substantially throughout of thinner material than the base of the cap.
 3. The safety cap of claim 1 wherein said peripheral edge portion area grooves and lands are radial.
 4. The safety cap of claim 3 wherein the grooves have solid bottoms.
 5. The safety cap of claim 1 wherein the peripheral edge portion lands and grooves are annular. 